Love is Weakness
by impureevilregal
Summary: After Cora's death, Regina makes a mistake, that could prove fatal for the resident's of Storybrooke. Now, she has to make a choice, but can she do the right thing, or will it prove to hard?


Regina had always thought herself strong and persistent. As someone who would never once waver in her goals or determination,as someone who would work as hard as she could, and one day receive her happy ending.

At least, that's what she used to think. But now, ever since her curse broke she doubted herself, she doubted her ability and her reason, slowly yet surely, her hope diminished itself, and now it was gone completely.

She had been told many different things, many different conflicting things, and this was one of them. She had been taught that love was hope, and that love was weakness, and had often been conflicted between the two sides, always conflicted between two beliefs, and never knowing which was truly the right and proper answer, instead guessing, blind to the truth of it.

But now, the choice seemed clear to her, more clear than it had ever seemed to her, for the first time ever, everything made sense, everything made perfect sense. All she could see and hear now was the truth of her Mother's words, pounding in her mind, coming from everything around her, every object in the secret room seemed to be repeating the words over and over.

_Love is weakness. Love is weakness. Love is weakness._

It seemed that her mother was right in the end, that love really was a weakness, a liability, another way to get hurt. Regina wanted to thank her, to tell her that she was right, but then she remembered the sad truth.

She couldn't thank her.

She couldn't talk to her.

Because her Mother was dead now. Dead because she trusted Snow White, dead because she had trusted her, because she had hoped for just a few seconds that her Mother could love her, that she needed to have a heart, that she needed to have weakness. When as it turned out, she was wrong, her mother had loved her before, her mother had loved her in the best way she knew how to.

And now she was dead because Regina had wanted more, she had wanted something she couldn't have. And had to pay the consequences. She had to finally once and for all accept the truth. She had to accept what she had denied for so long. That she wasn't going to be happy with love, because it wasn't real, it always faded, and then left her with even less than before.

Perhaps love wasn't a weakness for some people, maybe, for some people love could give long, lasting happiness, and hope, but Regina wasn't one of those people. On the contrary, it was the exact opposite. Love only caused pain and sorrow for her. Everything she loved left her in the end. And now, for the first time she actually saw it. For the first time, she actually saw the magnitude of the problem.

Magic wasn't the cause of her problems. No, the cause of her problems was love. The more she sought love, the more it threatened to destroy her, and turn even more people to hate her, then again, there weren't many people who didn't hate her already to begin with. Even Henry couldn't stand her, even he saw her as the evil queen.

But then again, that was all she was, right? Not a real person, no, a mere villain, only good for standing in the way of the hero's happiness, only good for trying to stop the hero's precious _love. _ And the more she did, the more she was reviled. Even when she tried to help, even when she tried to change, she wasn't believed, instead she was regarded with suspicion, and blamed at the first hind of wrongdoing, no matter how much of an alibi or how innocent she was in the matter, she would never be seen as anything more than the evil queen.

No, there was only one solution to her problem, there was only one way to stop herself from this overwhelming sense of despair, from the sickening feeling that made her feel numb to the very core, making her feel as if nothing would ever be enough to get her out of the sea of sadness she had fallen into, and then drowned in. Regina didn't know if she was truly alive, she felt only numb, like she was encased in ice, her very heart frozen, her very being a bottomless pit of despair, that she could never escape from, and only sink deeper and deeper into, never managing to reach the bottom.

Then, she hit it, then she figured out how to fix it. Her Mother was happy, wasn't she? And her Mother didn't have a heart. Maybe Regina could do the same, maybe Regina could get rid of the despair and the ice by taking out the organ troubling her, the thing that only managed to hurt her and make her feel that much more pain. She could cut out the infected area before it wounded the rest of the tree.

With her mind made up, she raised her arm, and plunged it right into her own chest, feeling exactly what it was like to get her heart removed. It felt painful, very painful, red and angry, like her body was trying to resist the unwanted intruder, but with a tug of her arm out of the body, with her heart in hand, it was over, and she had her heart quite literally in her hands.

No more love.

No more weakness.


End file.
